Saturday, November 29, 2008

Too much of a good thing isn't always so sweet

In describing SWPL's comments section as dizzying, I meant that such an abundance of remarks almost guarantees that most commenters are not reading the comments of other commenters. Consequently, there is a lot of duplication in points made and repetition of questions raised (and answers given), etc. It goes from a discussion to a chance to "sound off".

There isn't much to be done about this, which is unfortunate since the people who are able to generate such a high number of comments are those who putatively write the things most worth talking about. Hosts who approve comments have the opportunity to filter out duplicates if they choose, but it requires a substantial time commitment for a pretty mundane task that in the end won't add much value anyway, unless it is done meticulously, post after post.

Fortunately, it's usually not a problem here! Quality over quantity, right?

5 comments:

Almost as pointless as massive numbers of comments are individual comments that ramble along for paragraph after paragraph. I cannot understand why anyone would bother writing a 1,000-word blog comment. Very few people are going to bother to read it!